Since Saul Kripke’s influential work in the 1970s, the revisionary approach to semantic paradox—the idea that semantic paradoxes must be solved by weakening classical logic—has been increasingly popular. In this paper, we present a new revenge argument to the effect that the main revisionary approaches breed new paradoxes that they are unable to block.

In the wake of widescale deadly attacks, desire and support for military revenge are prevalent. Rather than dismissing it as due to ignorance, moral depravity or heat of the moment, I propose that support for military revenge is more charitably understood as support for a “retributive revenge war,” aimed at inflicting deserved harms on the enemy without punitive authority. Revising McMahan's conception of just cause, I argue that a retributive revenge war could in principle be just, (...) if deserved harms could be good independently of their consequences. I then consider several reasons to think that in practice, such wars are unlikely to be just and submit that the strongest reason is that they would be disproportionate. Targeted vengeful attacks which are highly unlikely to escalate may therefore be proportionate and justified under certain retributivist assumptions, but all-out revenge wars are highly unlikely to be proportionate and just. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I revisit an important response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) challenge: The Common Functional Role strategy (CFR). I argue that CFR is open to a revenge problem. MTE-cases allegedly show that two linguistic communities can be in genuine disagreement even when they are regulated by distinct families of properties. CFR provides a way to reconcile the intuition that the two communities are in genuine disagreement with the claim that the use of moral terms by both (...) communities is causally regulated by different families of properties. This is done by identifying a functional role that those families of properties both fulfill. Still, even if CFR is successful, its proponents need to face a serious revenge problem. Roughly, it could be that the families of properties that regulate each community are equally perfect realizers of the relevant higher-order functional state. I suggest that the proponent of CFR faces a dilemma: either CFR has controversial implications about first-order moral theory, or CFR needs to be coupled with substantive and parochial empirical/metaphysical assumptions to avoid those implications. (shrink)

It’s plausible that you cannot know, or be justified in believing that your lottery ticket is a loser solely on the basis of the odds involved. I argue that extant views which deliver this result fall prey to a revenge problem. They entail that if you believe that your ticket is a winner on the basis of the astronomically low odds of it being a winner, your belief would be just as justified as in the case where you believe (...) that it is a loser. This seems absurd. I examine two ways of escaping the revenge problem. The first solution aims to vindicate the intuition that one is more justified in believing that one’s ticket is a loser than that it is a winner. I argue that the axiological assumptions required for this solution are unmotivated and implausible. The second solution is error-theoretic in nature. It concedes that one would be equally justified in believing that one’s ticket is a loser or a winner, but maintains that the former belief manifests greater epistemic value. The fact that it is epistemically better to believe that one’s ticket is a loser, rather than a winner, explains the relevant intuitions. (shrink)

Is there a notion of contradiction—let us call it, for dramatic effect, “absolute”—making all contradictions, so understood, unacceptable also for dialetheists? It is argued in this paper that there is, and that spelling it out brings some theoretical benefits. First it gives us a foothold on undisputed ground in the methodologically difficult debate on dialetheism. Second, we can use it to express, without begging questions, the disagreement between dialetheists and their rivals on the nature of truth. Third, dialetheism has an (...) operator allowing it, against the opinion of many critics, to rule things out and manifest disagreement: for unlike other proposed exclusion-expressing-devices (for instance, the entailment of triviality), the operator used to formulate the notion of absolute contradiction appears to be immune both from crippling expressive limitations and from revenge paradoxes—pending a rigorous nontriviality proof for a formal dialetheic theory including it. (shrink)

Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver is widely considered a cinematic masterpiece. Existing scholarly deconstructions focus on prevalent themes of masculinity, violence, and exploitation. This work reinterprets the central narrative as a revenge story in three parts, using cinematic context; the occurrences and actions of the protagonist – the eponymous taxi driver Travis Bickle - to answer the question of whether revenge is ever morally justifiable.

Revenge is typically conceptualized as a response to past wrongs—acts that have already occurred and demand redress. But this temporal framing relies on a human experience of causality and time: we are harmed, we remember, and we respond. What happens, however, when we are certain that harm will occur in the future? Using the example of death—inevitable by entropic decay and supported by empirical limits on the human lifespan—this paper proposes a reframing: that certainty about future harms may justify (...) present moral or emotional responses traditionally reserved for past events. This shift has implications not just for how we understand revenge, but for how we perceive causality, responsibility, and justice in an entropic universe. Drawing on themes from metaphysics, the psychology of moral emotions, and time asymmetry in physics, I argue that the boundary between past and certain future harms is morally permeable. In particular, we may find ourselves justified—perhaps even obligated—to emotionally, symbolically, or materially retaliate against “agents” like entropy—not to punish, but to assert existential resistance. This paper offers both a philosophical provocation and an emotional hypothesis: that certainty, not temporal position, should guide moral salience. (shrink)

Despite being a prevalent theme in popular cinema, revenge has received little dedicated attention within film studies. The majority of research concerning the concept of revenge is located within moral philosophy, but that body of literature has been overlooked by film studies scholars. Philosophers routinely draw on filmic examples to illustrate their discussions of revenge, but those interpretations are commonly hindered by their authors’ inexperience with film studies’ analytical methods. This article seeks to bridge those gaps. The (...) 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave is used as a case study to illustrate the benefits of an interdisciplinary engagement with revenge. Philosophical literature on the topic has routinely posited that revenge is either appealing or appalling, and that impasse has stifled conceptual understanding. The interdisciplinary approach employed here elucidates that revenge is simultaneously appealing and appalling; this dualistic nature is evident in I Spit on Your Grave since it is built into the narrative design. I conclude that an interdisciplinary approach to revenge has the potential to advance understanding of revenge-qua-concept both within films studies and philosophy. (shrink)

Davidson advocates a radical and powerful form of anti-conventionalism, on which the scope of a semantic theory is restricted to the most local of contexts: a particular utterance by a particular speaker. I argue that this hyper-localism undercuts the explanatory grounds for his assumption that semantic meaning is systematic, which is central, among other things, to his holism. More importantly, it threatens to undercut the distinction between word meaning and speaker’s meaning, which he takes to be essential to semantics. I (...) argue that a moderate form of conventionalism can restore systematicity and the word/speaker distinction while accommodating Davidson’s insights about the complexities and contextual variability of language use. (shrink)

Most work on the semantic paradoxes within classical logic has centered around what this essay calls “linguistic” accounts of the paradoxes: they attribute to sentences or utterances of sentences some property that is supposed to explain their paradoxical or nonparadoxical status. “No proposition” views are paradigm examples of linguistic theories, although practically all accounts of the paradoxes subscribe to some kind of linguistic theory. This essay shows that linguistic accounts of the paradoxes endorsing classical logic are subject to a particularly (...) acute form of the revenge paradox: that there is no exhaustive classification of sentences into “good” and “bad” such that the T-schema holds when restricted to the “good” sentences unless it is also possible to prove some “bad” sentences. The foundations for an alternative classical nonlinguistic approach is outlined that is not subject to the same kinds of problems. Although revenge paradoxes of different strengths can be formulated, they are found to be indeterminate at higher orders and not inconsistent. (shrink)

In "Nothing Is True," Will Gamester defends a form of alethic nihilism that still grants truth-talk a kind of legitimacy: an expressive role that is implemented via a pretense. He argues that this view has all of the strengths of deflationism, while also providing an elegant resolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. For the alethic nihilist, Liar and related sentences are not true, and that is the end of the story. No contradiction arises because it does not thereby (...) follow that any of these sentences are also true, since nothing is. Gamester concludes that the simplicity of this response to the semantic paradoxes makes alethic nihilism an attractive approach. We disagree. In addition to providing insurmountable obstacles for his form of alethic nihilism, we contend that a certain form of non-nihilist deflationism is better placed to deal with the paradoxes and to account for truth-talk more generally. (shrink)

Recent no-go theorems for absolute facts in single-world interpretations are widely considered the strongest arguments in favour of ‘quantum relativism’: interpretations according to which measurement results are observer-relative. In this paper, however, I show that relativist interpretations are themselves vulnerable to mathematically identical ‘revenge’ theorems, unless they assume a particularly radical form. To this end, a novel distinction between tame and feral varieties of quantum relativism is introduced, where a relativist interpretation counts as tame if and only if it (...) postulates i) absolute facts about relative facts (absolute facts of second order) and ii) the possibility of communication across perspectives. While at first sight preferable to feral views, tame relativism turns out to be subject to revenge problems: arguments against absolute measurement outcomes can be modified and turned against absolute facts about which outcome a measurement has relative to a particular observer. This observation is developed in detail for the case of the ‘Local Friendliness’ EWF theorem. Moreover, it is shown to generalise to absolute facts about the facts that obtain relative to sequences of specified reference systems of arbitrary length. This suggests that only the most radical types of relativist interpretations have a hope of being motivated with recourse to EWF scenarios. (shrink)

Scholars and activists have introduced the notion of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) to describe any act involving the non-consensual production, distribution, or threat of distribution of private sexual images. In common parlance, these harmful practices are frequently referred to as ‘revenge porn’ – a colloquial expression rooted in misogynistic internet subcultures. In this paper, we challenge the use of this term, arguing that it constitutes a case of positive hermeneutical injustice. Departing from Fricker’s lacuna-centred account, we contend that the (...) concept of ‘revenge porn’ distorts the collective understanding of IBSA by preventing the uptake of more accurate concepts, while simultaneously reinforcing misogynistic background ideologies that eroticize autonomy-violation. Drawing on real-world cases, we show how this concept obstructs institutional redress and reinforces epistemic marginalization: it hampers the identification of IBSA, obscures the structural nature of the abuse, recasts it as entertainment, objectifies victims, and shifts blame onto them. We conclude by calling for the disuse of the term ‘revenge porn’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCurrent evolutionary models of revenge focus on its complex deterrent functions. Nevertheless, there are some retaliatory behaviors in nonhuman animals that do not appear to have a deterren...

Consider the reaction of Trayvon Martin’s family to the jury verdict. They were devastated that George Zimmerman, the defendant, was found not guilty of manslaughter or murder. Whatever the merits of this outcome, what does the Martin family’s emotional reaction mean? What does it say about criminal punishment – especially the reasons why we punish? Why did the Martin family want to see George Zimmerman go to jail? And why were – and are – they so upset that he didn’t? (...) -/- This Article will argue for three points. First, what fuels this kind of outrage is vengeance: the desire to see defendants like George Zimmerman be forced to “pay” for the harms that they needlessly and culpably inflict on others. While this point may seem obvious, it isn’t. Most people repudiate revenge and therefore the notion that it plays any role in the criminal justice system. -/- Second, this attitude toward revenge is misguided and needs to change. We need to recognize that vengeance not only does but should play a significant role in motivating criminal punishment. Our vengeful reactions to harmful crimes are not ugly or shameful; on the contrary, they manifest a deep valuation of victims and a bitter denunciation of individuals who actively renounce this valuation through their criminal behavior. -/- Third, these two points have significant implications for the two main theories of criminal punishment: “retributivism,” which says that criminals should be punished in order to give them their “just deserts,” and “consequentialism,” which says that criminals should be punished in order to bring about such good consequences as deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Traditionally, these two theories have been at war with one another. But I will show how recognizing revenge as a motivation and justification for punishment can help to end this war and bring these two theories together. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the way the videogame The Last of Us: Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020) manages to entice players to question the ethical adequacy of their own gaming behaviour.

How far can we take Contingency Arguments? I intend the argument I present in this paper to be a minimal (or incomplete) version of a stage (II) contingency argument. I shall be demonstrating that one can argue from the existence of at least one merely modally necessary being to a being who is ontologically necessary (necessary in itself). Consequently, I shall be defending a dichotomy originally presented by Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna), who states that a modally necessary being is (...) either ontologically necessary or its necessity is derived. (shrink)

James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument’s possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry in epistemic entitlements to the original and reverse possibility premisses. Second, relevantly similar Kripkean cases equally undercut the original possibility premiss.

According to the perceptual view of language comprehension, listeners typically recover high-level linguistic properties such as utterance meaning without inferential work. The perceptual view is subject to the Objection from Context: since utterance meaning is massively context-sensitive, and context-sensitivity requires cognitive inference, the perceptual view is false. In recent work, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging reply to this objection. She argues that in language comprehension context-sensitivity is typically exercised not through inferences, but rather through top-down perceptual modulations or perceptual learning. (...) This paper provides a complete formulation of the Objection from Context and evaluates Brogaards reply to it. Drawing on conceptual considerations and empirical examples, we argue that the exercise of context-sensitivity in language comprehension does, in fact, typically involve inference. (shrink)

This paper confronts the familiar prejudice in Western Marxism that Engels’ thought, as articulated in Anti-Duhring and the Dialectics of Nature, is of marginal interest and should be excised from Marxist theory. I argue that this view is mistaken. If we do not take seriously his insights about science, philosophy, nature, and history, his insights will take a fourfold revenge upon us. Natural science takes its revenge by unleashing technology that subjugates us in ways we cannot anticipate, understand (...) or control. Philosophy, in turn, takes revenge on science for neglecting the philosophical presuppositions of its own worldview. Nature itself takes its revenge upon those who consider it to be some formless and passive matter, deprived of history and negativity, responding to our productive activity in surprising ways that, without a rational form of regulation, could lead to our own extinction. Lastly, history takes revenge on those ‘well intentioned’ actors who try to impose their will upon it without a scientific knowledge of its internal, necessary, and objective forces. (shrink)

In a series of recent publications, Jeffrey King (The nature and structure of content, 2007; Proc Aristot Soc 109(3):257–277, 2009; Philos Stud, 2012) argues for a view on which propositions are facts. He also argues against views on which propositions are set-theoretical objects, in part because such views face Benacerraf problems. In this paper, we argue that, when it comes to Benacerraf problems, King’s view doesn’t fare any better than its set-theoretical rivals do. Finally, we argue that his view faces (...) a further Benacerraf problem, one that threatens to undercut his explanation of why propositions have truth-conditions. If correct, our arguments undercut King’s main motivation for accepting his view over its rivals. See King 2019 for a reply. (shrink)

Deviant phenomenal knowledge is knowing what it’s like to have experiences of, e.g., red without actually having had experiences of red. Such a knower is a deviant. Some physicalists have argued and some anti-physicalists have denied that the possibility of deviants undermines anti-physicalism and the Knowledge Argument. The current paper presents new arguments defending the deviant-based attacks on anti-physicalism. Central to my arguments are considerations concerning the psychosemantic underpinnings of deviant phenomenal knowledge. I argue that physicalists are in a superior (...) position to account for the conditions in virtue of which states of deviants constitute representations of phenomenal facts. (shrink)

Most philosophers are familiar with the metaphysical puzzle of the statue and the clay. A sculptor begins with some clay, eventually sculpting a statue from it. Are the clay and the statue one and the same thing? Apparently not, since they have different properties. For example, the clay could survive being squashed, but the statue could not. The statue is recently formed, though the clay is not, etc. Godehart Link 1983’s highly influential analysis of the count/mass distinction recommends that English (...) draws a distinction between uncountable “stuff” and countable “things”. There are two mereological relations, related in specific ways. Our primary question here is whether an empirically adequate account of the mass/count distinction really does require distinguishing “things” from “stuff”, and thus postulating two corresponding mereological relations, or if instead positing only one sort of entity and corresponding mereological relation is sufficient, as other semantic theories would have it. This question is meant to be one of what we call natural language mereology. We are asking about the mereological commitments of English, or perhaps competent speakers of English, and not about ultimate reality as such. There is no pretense that we will definitively solve the metaphysical puzzle of the statue and clay. (shrink)

Fregean theories of descriptions as terms have to deal with improper descriptions. To save bivalence various proposals have been made that involve assigning referents to improper descriptions. While bivalence is indeed saved, there is a price to be paid. Instantiations of the same general scheme, viz. the one and only individual that is F and G is G, are not only allowed but even required to have different truth values.

Trudy Govier offers a sweeping moral critique of revenge, arguing that even non-violent, limited, acts of revenge are wrong, insofar as they necessarily treat the target as an instrument of the revenger’s satisfaction (offending against respect for persons) and thus morally diminish the revenger. I challenge Govier’s critique by broadening her account of revenge, focusing in particular on its communicative complexities. Revenge aims to address rather than use its target, I argue, for the revenger to be (...) satisfied. It is plausibly described as a kind of forcible persuasion, in which the revenger aims to convince her target of the target’s moral desert and the revenger’s moral authority. Nevertheless, the unilateral nature of this address and the morally simplistic worldview on which it depends present significant (and likely fatal) moral risks to any project of vengeance. (shrink)

Govier conceives of forgiveness as “a process of overcoming attitudes of resentment and anger that may persist when one has been injured by wrongdoing” (viii). She offers an account of bilateral, unilateral, and mutual forgiveness. Her work has pronounced political import in that she argues that attitudes and dispositions can be attributed to groups, that groups can suffer harm, and that groups can be responsible agents of wrongdoing. As a consequence, Govier contends that groups can forgive. Her method is to (...) employ a host of examples taken from recent (World War II and after) history, sprinkle in a few invented examples, and lay out long-winded and typically repetitive arguments. The result is an occasionally provocative and often overly one-sided treatment punctuated by earnestness. (shrink)

This essay develops an informal but psychologically motivated framework for understanding long-term revenge narratives in modern commercial cinema. The central claim is simple: intense grudges require fuel. Human beings are not naturally designed to sustain maximum emotional hostility indefinitely. Yet many revenge films portray decade-long vendettas with mythic consistency and near-total emotional continuity. This essay argues that such stories often operate in a hybrid space between realism and mythology-appearing psychologically realistic on the surface while secretly relying on epic, (...) paranoid, or hyper-symbolic logic underneath. The paper introduces three related ideas: the "Fuel Theory of Grudges," the notion of "pseudo-realistic cinema," and what is termed the "John Nash Trap"-a narrative condition in which all relationships become suspect and reality itself appears transformed into an interconnected web of hidden enemies and engineered betrayal. The broader philosophical argument is that a world without trust becomes psychologically unlivable. Endless vigilance may preserve survival in fiction, but in ordinary life it risks dissolving the emotional foundations of human existence itself. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. Most logical pluralists think that logic is normative in the sense that you make a mistake if you accept the premisses of a valid argument but reject its conclusion. Some authors have argued that this combination is self-undermining: Suppose that L1 and L2 are correct logics that coincide except for the argument from Γ to φ, which is valid in L1 but invalid in L2. If you accept (...) all sentences in Γ, then, by normativity, you make a mistake if you reject φ. In order to avoid mistakes, you should accept φ or suspend judgment about φ. Both options are problematic for pluralism. Can pluralists avoid this worry by rejecting the normativity of logic? I argue that they cannot. All else being equal, the argument goes through even if logic is not normative. (shrink)

Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term _true_, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative dissolutions to this problem of epistemic circularity are shown to be unsatisfactory. One solution is offered on functionalists' behalf, though it has the upshot that they must tread on their anti-pluralist commitments.

In this paper, I defend Rudolf Carnap's Principle of Tolerance from an accusation, due to Michael Friedman, that it is self-defeating by prejudicing any debate towards the logically stronger theory. In particular, Friedman attempts to show that Carnap's reconstruction of the debate between classicists and intuitionists over the foundations of mathematics in his book The Logical Syntax of Language, is biased towards the classical standpoint since the metalanguage he constructs to adjudicate between the rival positions is fully classical. I argue (...) that this criticism is mistaken on two counts: (1) it fails to fully appreciate the freedom with regard to the construction of linguistic frameworks that Carnap intended his Principle to embody, and (2) Friedman's objection underestimates the extent to which the evaluation of a framework is task-relative. I conclude that Tolerance is not self-undermining in the way that Friedman claims it is. While this is a restricted conclusion -- and is not a vindication of Carnap's views on logic and mathematics tout court -- it nonetheless suggests that his tolerant perspective has been dismissed too quickly, even by his supporters. (shrink)

I develop a genealogy of the concept of ‘energy’ in western philosophy and science, focusing on how energy concepts (e.g., energeia, vis viva, kinetic/potential energy) have been theorized in relation to time. Looking especially to the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, I argue that the thread that connects energy concepts through time is the epistemological tendency to derive conceptual accounts of change from a prior ontological sameness or essence. I then attempt to lay the (...) groundwork for a process metaphysics that harmonizes with contemporary findings in the physical sciences, while also extending the concept of energy to account for the presence of subjectivity in nature. (shrink)

A common response to the paradoxes of vagueness and truth is to introduce the truth-values “neither true nor false” or “both true and false” (or both). However, this infamously runs into trouble with higher-order vagueness or the revenge paradox. This, and other considerations, suggest iterating “both” and “neither”: as in “neither true nor neither true nor false.” We present a novel explication of iterating “both” and “neither.” Unlike previous approaches, each iteration will change the logic, and the logic in (...) the limit of iteration is an extension of paraconsistent quantum logic. Surprisingly, we obtain the same limit logic if we use (a) both and neither, (b) only neither, or (c) only neither applied to comparable truth-values. These results promise new and fruitful replies to the paradoxes of vagueness and truth. (The paper allows for modular reading: for example, half of it is an appendix studying involutive lattices to prove the results.). (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

This article informally presents a solution to the paradoxes of truth and shows how the solution solves classical paradoxes (such as the original Liar) as well as the paradoxes that were invented as counterarguments for various proposed solutions (“the revenge of the Liar”). This solution complements the classical procedure of determining the truth values of sentences by its own failure and, when the procedure fails, through an appropriate semantic shift allows us to express the failure in a classical two-valued (...) language. Formally speaking, the solution is a language with one meaning of symbols and two valuations of the truth values of sentences. The primary valuation is a classical valuation that is partial in the presence of the truth predicate. It enables us to determine the classical truth value of a sentence or leads to the failure of that determination. The language with the primary valuation is precisely the largest intrinsic fixed point of the strong Kleene three-valued semantics (LIFPSK3). The semantic shift that allows us to express the failure of the primary valuation is precisely the classical closure of LIFPSK3: it extends LIFPSK3 to a classical language in parts where LIFPSK3 is undetermined. Thus, this article provides an argumentation, which has not been present in contemporary debates so far, for the choice of LIFPSK3 and its classical closure as the right model for the truth predicate. In the end, an erroneous critique of Kripke-Feferman axiomatic theory of truth, which is present in contemporary literature, is pointed out. (shrink)

I use the principle of truth-maker maximalism to provide a new solution to the semantic paradoxes. According to the solution, AUS, its undecidable whether paradoxical sentences are grounded or ungrounded. From this it follows that their alethic status is undecidable. We cannot assert, in principle, whether paradoxical sentences are true, false, either true or false, neither true nor false, both true and false, and so on. AUS involves no ad hoc modification of logic, denial of the T-schema's validity, or obvious (...) revenge. (shrink)

An important suggestion of objective Bayesians is that the maximum entropy principle can replace a principle which is known to get into paradoxical difficulties: the principle of indifference. No one has previously determined whether the maximum entropy principle is better able to solve Bertrand’s chord paradox than the principle of indifference. In this paper I show that it is not. Additionally, the course of the analysis brings to light a new paradox, a revenge paradox of the chords, that is (...) unique to the maximum entropy principle. (shrink)

Non-classical solutions to semantic paradox can be associated with conceptions of paradoxicality understood in terms of entailment facts. In a K3-based theory of truth, for example, it is prima facie natural to say that a sentence φ is paradoxical iff φ ∨ ¬φ entails an absurdity. In a recent paper, Julien Murzi and Lorenzo Rossi exploit this idea to introduce revenge paradoxes for a number of non-classical approaches, including K3. In this paper, I show that on no understanding of (...) ‘is paradoxical’ (for K3) should both rules needed for their paradox be expected to hold unrestrictedly. Just which rule fails, however, depends on various factors, including whether the derivability relation of a target system of reasoning is arithmetically definable. (shrink)

The aim of the paper will be to analyze the different strategies that the Stoics of the Imperial times designed in order to put our sense of justice on hold, due to the fact that it is deemed responsible for certain attitudes which do not contribute to our search for _eudaimonía_. I will organize such strategies in two groups: the first one corresponds to the strategies that target the idea that an injustice has been committed; the second one corresponds to (...) the ones that aim to show that there are more convenient attitudes towards injustice than the demand for punishment or the desire for revenge. I will end by pointing at the difficulty of reconciling both sets of strategies, and I will suggest a possible way to account for that difficulty. (shrink)

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for (...) recognition, I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

It’s bad to hang on to a belief in the face of good evidence that it’s false. That makes you dogmatic. Enter the classic dogmatism puzzle. The standard response? Go for defeat: new evidence can destroy old knowledge. But there are variants on the classic dogmatism puzzle which defeat can’t help with. Worse still, these puzzles threaten to undermine the standard defeatist solution to the classic puzzle. Call these the revenge puzzles. Two are already noted in the literature. In (...) this paper, I introduce a third, particularly severe revenge puzzle. I then present a unified solution to the revenge puzzles. The solution motivates a boldly revisionary conception of belief: one on which belief involves the will. (shrink)

biography as a revenge to some ideal ideals.

Victims of wrongdoing sometimes forgive to repair relationships with the wrongdoer. But how does forgiveness do this? Some have argued that forgiveness changes the way the wrongdoing is remembered. We empirically adjudicate two competing accounts of how forgiveness is related to memory. The episodic fading account states that forgiveness alters both the episodic and the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of being wronged. By contrast, the emotional fading account states that forgiveness mainly alters the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of (...) being wronged. While the episodic fading account predicts that forgiveness is associated with less vivid and detailed memories of being wronged, the emotional fading account predicts that forgiveness need not be associated with diminished episodic characteristics. Across four studies (N = 1,479, after exclusions), we found consistent support for the emotional fading account but not for the episodic fading account. In a pilot study and in Study 1, we found that forgiven wrongs were rated as less affectively intense and less negatively valenced compared to unforgiven wrongs, while there was no difference in the episodic characteristics of the memories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 and additionally found that the valence and intensity of forgiven wrongs are different for the victims of wrongdoings compared to perpetrators. Finally, in Study 3, we found once again different ratings of intensity and valence for forgiven relative to not forgiven wrongs and, additionally, we found that the affective characteristics of remembered forgiven wrongs were associated with diminished tendencies toward seeking revenge and avoiding the wrongdoer along with amplified benevolence toward the wrongdoer. In sum, memories of forgiven wrongs consistently differed in their affective, but not their episodic, characteristics relative to memories of wrongdoings that were not forgiven. (shrink)

A number of authors have objected to the application of non-classical logic to problems in philosophy on the basis that these non-classical logics are usually characterised by a classical metatheory. In many cases the problem amounts to more than just a discrepancy; the very phenomena responsible for non-classicality occur in the field of semantics as much as they do elsewhere. The phenomena of higher order vagueness and the revenge liar are just two such examples. The aim of this paper (...) is to show that a large class of non-classical logics are strong enough to formulate their own model theory in a corresponding non-classical set theory. Specifically I show that adequate definitions of validity can be given for the propositional calculus in such a way that the metatheory proves, in the specified logic, that every theorem of the propositional fragment of that logic is validated. It is shown that in some cases it may fail to be a classical matter whether a given sentence is valid or not. One surprising conclusion for non-classical accounts of vagueness is drawn: there can be no axiomatic, and therefore precise, system which is determinately sound and complete. (shrink)

On the traditional view, Butler maintains that forgiveness involves a kind of “conversion experience” in which we must forswear or let go of our resentment against wrongdoers. Against this reading, I argue that Butler never demands that we forswear resentment but only that we be resentful in the right kind of way. That is, he insists that we should be virtuously resentful, avoiding both too much resentment exhibited by the vices of malice and revenge and too little resentment where (...) we merely condone the wrongdoer and leave ourselves open to future injury. I argue that this Butlerian approach offers us a more attractive account of forgiveness as a “virtue” than many recent discussions. In the final section, I address Butler’s challenging thesis that forgiveness is an unconditional moral duty. I argue against those who claim that forgiveness is supererogatory (Kolnai/Calhoun) or else merely morally conditional and even morally blameworthy in some cases (Murphy/Hampton/Novitz/Richards). By contrast, I defend a context-sensitive account of forgiveness which recognizes that it takes place on many different levels. I conclude by taking up the difficult issue of whether anybody can be ultimately “unforgivable”, offering some Butlerian and Strawsonian reflections that might help mitigate our judgments about such matters. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel explanatory reconstruction of revenge by examining a feature commonly acknowledged but theoretically underexplored: its character as a personal matter. Analysis of this dimension shows four distinctive features of revenge. First, it is the response to a perceived harm done to someone’s core identity; second, it aims at restoring the victim’s sense of self-worth; third, it is nontransferable, that is, it presupposes the victim to be the cause of the perceived offender’s harm; and fourth, (...) its harm is intended to be at least as significant for the perceived offender as the triggering harm was for the avenger. The study attempts to explain how this proposed explanatory reconstruction allows us to effectively distinguish revenge from similar phenomena such as retaliation, punishment, and retribution, while clarifying its distinctive features. Finally, this approach not only clarifies revenge’s motivational structure but also provides methodological guidance for research in legal theory and psychology. (shrink)

Recent empirical work suggests that emotions are responsible for anti-consequentialist intuitions. For instance, anger places value on actions of revenge and retribution, value not derived from the consequences of these actions. As a result, it contributes to the development of retributive intuitions. I argue that if anger evolved to produce these retributive intuitions because of their biological consequences, then these intuitions are not a good indicator that punishment has value apart from its consequences. This severs the evidential connection between (...) retributive intuitions and the retributive value of punishment. This argument may generalize to other deontological intuitions and theories. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical treatment of feminist epistemology of crime, which advocates the centrality of gender as a theoretical starting point for the investigating of digital crimes. It does so by exploring the synergy between the feminist perspectives and the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework (TCF) (which argues that three possible factors motivate cybercrimes – socioeconomic, psychosocial, and geopolitical) to critique mainstream criminology and the meaning of the term “cybercrime”. Additionally, the article examines gender gaps in online harassment, cyber‐bullying, cyber‐fraud, (...) class='Hi'>revenge porn, and cyber‐stalking to demonstrate that who is victimised, why, and to what effect are the critical starting points for the analysis of the connections between gender and crimes. In turn, it uses the lens of intersectionality to acknowledge that, while conceptions of gender and crime interact, they intersect with other categories (e.g., sexuality) to provide additional layers of explanation. To nuance the utilitarian value of the synergy between the TCF and the feminist perspectives, the focus shifts to a recent case study (which compared socioeconomic and psychosocial cybercrimes). The article concludes that, while online and offline lives are inextricably intertwined, the victimisations in psychosocial cybercrimes may be more gendered than in socioeconomic cybercrimes. These contributions align the TCF to the feminist epistemology of crime in their attempt to move gender analysis of digital crimes “from margin to centre”. (shrink)

According to common-sense morality, agents can become morally connected to the wrongdoing of others, such that they incur special obligations to prevent or rectify the wrongs committed by the primary wrongdoer. We argue that, under certain conditions, voluntary and unjustified observation of another agent’s degrading wrongdoing, or of the ‘product’ of their wrongdoing, can render an agent morally liable to bear costs for the sake of the victim of the primary wrong. We develop our account with particular reference to widespread (...) modern phenomena such as so-called ‘revenge porn’, ‘up-skirting’, and the online observation of sexual assault and murder. On our account, observation is not a sui generis basis of liability. Instead, observation grounds liability in virtue of manifesting three, more general, grounds of liability. First, observation can compound a primary wrong, making that wrong more harmful for the victim. Second, observation can constitute degrading treatment of the victim. Third, in certain cases observation can enable primary wrongdoing. We conclude by discussing the conditions under which observing degrading wrongs might be morally justified. (shrink)